IO9.COM - Browncoats rejoice! Joss Whedon's space Western Firefly may never return to television, but the 'verse goes on. And soon, you'll be able to have a ship and crew of your own, when Firefly Online launches for the PC and Mac. We've got an exclusive first look at the ships, the guns, the characters and more...

As someone who's closely watched as the MMO industry has blown through over two billion dollars in investment, over the last decade, just on the dozens of MMOs that died ugly deaths while producing only four or so even borderline profitable games, you've already shown me enough to pronounce this one "doomed."

What every failed MMO in the last decade had in common was a workflow that went like this: 1) Start with concept art for a tabletop roleplaying game. 2) Then hire a huge army of 3D graphics artists to make art assets. 3) Then write an elaborate backstory and spend a lot of time designing and writing the key NPCs. 4) Then design the gameplay. 5) Then create the missions.

And that's almost exactly backwards from the way that the only actually profitable MMOs, WoW and EVE and RQ2 and GW1/2, did it.

And there's a reason for that. Step 2 in that process can literally suck down an infinite time and infinite money if you let it. Studio after studio after studio has blown through their first two shipping deadlines before they even thought about, let alone designed, let alone developed any actual gameplay. So, after spending two to four years on art asset creation, they spend three to at most six months on actually coding the game, which means they rush something out with incredibly unimaginative (and un-fun) gameplay. And since they spent no time up front working on mission creation tools the actual missions are slopped together using uneditable spaghetti code in a text editor or (at best) with a spreadsheet macro. Generally if one of these games ships at all it's because, having already blown through not only their entire development schedule, but also their entire budget, they're able to scrape up one last round of extra investment (that they can't afford) to finish maybe half of the amount of content they need.

And because the tools for creating content suck, that maybe 100, maybe 200 hours of gameplay is all there will ever be. You get maybe 5 or 10 hours of new content every 6 months after that, because the game, having borrowed so much money up front, cannot possibly bring in enough revenue to pay the staff it would take to debug the existing sloppily written missions, let alone make new ones.

So if an MMO studio doesn't show me fun-looking gameplay design and really efficient story-creation tools first, before they even start on art asset creation, after a decade of experience I feel comfortable predicting a short-lived financial disaster.

There was a time when it was very novel, and in the very least the whole game was far more convenient and better designed and less punishing than Everquest.

But actually the gameplay of WoW is very bland compared to other more recent games. Most MMORPGS nowadays fail because they're trying to copy WoW's increasingly stale gameplay formula.

Subscription system MMORPGs are failing everywhere, and the only reason WOW is hanging on is because it was the first to go mainstream and still has a massive player base. It's basically everyone's backup game that they've never uninstalled because they might go and check in with some of their friends when the next expansion comes out. It has had ten years of art style development that they've kept from aging too much, and people are still interested in the lore. But fun? No, not really.

I actually think that the premise of this Firefly game has a chance, if only because my understanding is that they're not going the WoW route. The battle mechanics from that one picture look to me a little like Fallout. And in terms of other features it sounds to me like a sandbox game with an economics side, a flight sim, and actual roleplaying. Which is something that the market has needed for a long time, since SWG was shut down for SWTOR.

I've thought for a while that their concept for the game is exactly the kind of Firefly game I've always wanted, and so far they haven't contradicted that. Even if it's a smart phone game. What I care about is the features. (EDIT: oooh, and the article says they decided to make it for computers too. For a while they were only talking about the smart phone app)

Ultimately firefly is a niche series and it's unlikely to get a mainstream playerbase, but that actually has worked fine for games like LOTRO, which has been quietly chugging along for years with a free to play model that still makes money.

In short, too soon to pronounce doom, especially if you're going off of that they're putting time and effort into graphics as the primary determining factor of whether it's going to fail.

I think this iz the way entertainment iz going. Its beyond moviez and TV showz
and ordinary video gamez.

Sifi riterz hav been predicting total emersion gamez for decadez.

I'v never played online gamez, but 11 yirz ago I wrote a story about it. Just finished turning it into webpajez! Itl take you a wile to get uzed to Nooalf, but if you like sex & violens, you will not be disappointed with XU GuD UXR DAZ.

Could you please just make it stranger? Stranger. Odder. Could be weirder. More bizarre. How about uncanny?

I helped fund this game (in a tiny way), and while it may not be "the best game ever", it will certainly be the best Firefly game online since Caption Tightpants. :P

Seriously though, it's a way the fans can keep the 'Verse alive, and everything needs to start somewhere, and this is a start. Not every game will be WoW or UO out of the box, and considering the massive hurdles that had to be cleared just to get this game going, I, for one, support any effort to keep the 'Verse relevant in a positive way.

Maybe I should just sit at my computer and spam the site till it works..lol I just found out about the game today from a coworker! How did I miss this? Now I just want to see what's going on and I am sad that I can't.

I'll try periodically till something happens I guess :) Am looking forward to keeping the series alive through game play.

Quote:UPDATE: Sorry, folks. The website got so much traffic we crashed the server, then the ISP. The ISP was, needless to say, not too happy. So we're moving everything over to an Amazon server. Should all be shiny soon.

There will be fire and brimstone and Earth will be destroyed!... in several billion years!-----------------------------------------
"Well, so long Earth. Thanks for the air... and what-not." -Philip J. Fry

Quote:UPDATE: Sorry, folks. The website got so much traffic we crashed the server, then the ISP. The ISP was, needless to say, not too happy. So we're moving everything over to an Amazon server. Should all be shiny soon.

I was able to register, but now all I get his some basic "Captain Stats" when I log in, with no apparent way to access existing stories anymore. Is everyone else currently experiencing that, or am I missing something?

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